Essential Professions: Keeping Society Running

The Dakar Rally has a lot of BEST. And one of them is also the BIGGEST. This year there were 812 competitors from 69 countries of the world who, during the two hardest weeks of their lives, race with 325 machines on a route 7,999 km long. They drive through the deserts and mountains of Saudi Arabia, fighting rivals, nature, technology, but also themselves.

It’s not just the toughest long-distance rally, it’s also one big adventure. Making sure the contestants are always on the right track and relatively safe, keeping this huge machine running, handling all the logistics and security requires a huge support team working behind the scenes.

We present to you seven professions without which Dakar would not be what it is.

Amazing aerial shots from the dunes, zigzagging between stones in mountain passes, but also moments of crisis and crashes… The best images, from which you can feel all the speed, difficulty, enthusiasm and hopelessness, are brought to you by an experienced team of cameramen and helicopter pilots.

Cameraman Eric Visier has been filming the Dakar Rally from the air for over thirty years and has a perfect eye and of course experience to share. He has taken aerial footage across four continents, starting with the original Paris-Dakar race in Europe and Africa, then South America and now Saudi Arabia.

“Over the years we’ve flown in various terrains and extreme conditions. But it’s still true that I love flying in the desert and filming in the dunes the most. Even after thirty-one Dakars, I still feel like a little boy whose dream came true. I’ve flown with several pilots and we’ve always been a great match, each of them knew what I needed and how to get the best picture. Yes, I love my job.”

Especially the first half of this year’s Dakar was extremely demanding on the tires. Whether we’re talking about cars or trucks, the jagged rocks of Saudi Arabia have torn apart more tires than ever before. “Each team brings its own tires, we had forty-four new ones and some old ones,” says Ivan Matoušek, chief engineer of the Orlen Jipocar ​​team. “At the tire service, they change our tires every day, and maybe they even carry some of their own iron stock, in case it doesn’t work out for anyone.”

Stéphane Boudet takes care of running the Dakar tire service. His BF Goodrich team runs a 24-hour workshop where they change around 250 tires a day, or 3,200 tires for the entire Dakar Rally. And in the first half of the Dakar, they certainly did not rest and there was a queue for them.

His team is divided into three shifts, each with six people. Two technicians remove the tires, two put them on, and another two inflate the tires to the correct pressure. “We never see the race. But we know exactly what stage was run by the tires,” says Stéphane Boudet.

The bivouac is home to teams, crews, journalists and support staff, and they all need to eat. There is a huge catering service, open twenty-four hours a day, where there is always something to eat. For breakfast, scrambled eggs, Arabic and toasted bread, sausages, yogurts, cereal. And also a croissant, fruit, marmalade and of course something to drink. There is always a choice for lunch, just like for dinner, but what can we say, the dishes rotate regularly and after a few days everything tastes the same.

And then there is Libor Vaněk, the chef of Martin Prokop’s team. A guy who is envied not only by all Czechs. For over a year, he has been working at the Sterilovanajidla.cz cannery, where you can buy fantastic canned food. And he also uses them on the Dakar. She takes care of fourteen hungry people and cooks everything from sirloin to Szegedin to potato pancakes and pancakes. They say you lose weight in the Dakar. But that doesn’t apply here!

The center of his kingdom in a small DAF truck is a five-burner stove, an oven and a few pots and lids. “I still make the preparations in the Czech Republic, we bring ready-made meals in tins and here I mainly finish the side dishes. When it’s at all possible, I serve breakfast, hot lunch and dinner, we also have soup every day. I also prepare something sweet, whether it’s gingerbread, pudding or bábovka, the boys like it. And of course I try to prepare something a lot extra, so for example fried cheese is traditionally served on a day off. Here in Saudi Arabia has absolutely luxurious Eidam-type cheese, and it makes a really famous fry, I wrap it in corn breadcrumbs.”

When the team eats, Libor Vaněk stands in the doorway of his kitchen on the side of the truck and observes how everyone tastes. “That’s the biggest reward for me, seeing satisfied diners who come to add more!”

The Dakar Race Control – PCO – takes care of the safety and logistics of all rally participants. Competitors, accompanying staff and journalists. For Quentin Potherat, that means making sure everyone is connected remotely with his teams at the control center in the bivouac and with the team in Paris.

All Dakar vehicles are equipped with sophisticated Iritrack tracking devices that provide them with a route map and directions for the day, as well as allowing the twenty-six-strong PCO team to track their location.

If something breaks down for someone, they can contact the plant management, who will send them help. If Iritrack’s sensors detect high congestion or some non-standard situation, the organizers contact the competitors or members of the entourage directly from Paris and then arrange the necessary support for them in Saudi Arabia. “Have they stopped? Do they need help? Are they lost? In short, we make sure that everyone who leaves the bivouac in the morning gets back to it safely,” says Quentin.

And if someone crashes in the middle of the stage, an alarm is immediately triggered to help the contestants as quickly as possible. There are service cars on the race track, six medical helicopters in the air. “We never know if we’ll have ten alarms in a day or none. Or if there won’t be three at once. That’s the hardest part, solving three problems in three different places. But handling the pressure and always having the right solution, that’s basically my job.”

Thierry Dudouet will tell you that his job is not particularly exciting, but it is necessary. He goes to work when everyone else stops working. He drives exhausted journalists from one bivouac to another in his bus. “During the day, when everyone is focused on the race, I wait and rest. And then, at night, we go to another bivouac.”

Yes, Thierry is a night bus driver and that bus is very special indeed. It is more like a sleeper train, where journalists can sleep well in peace, while Thierry smoothly swallows long kilometers behind the wheel and often travels all night to his final destination. “I drive calmly, carefully. My biggest fear is the camels that might cross our path. The biggest challenge is the massive speed bumps, which are full of them in Saudi Arabia. I drive them very slowly so as not to wake up my passengers,” he smiles. And he knows very well that he doesn’t have to rush at night, because the goal is not only to transport the journalists safely, but also to give them peace of mind to rest.

The scarecrow of all those who would like to cheat. He monitors, reports, must be uncompromising. And yet the mechanics in the teams like to see her. Yes, she…

Czech Kateřina Janovská wears the FIA ​​uniform and her job is to make sure the teams respect the rules. A thick folder of regulations and orders. From seat belts, through the working strokes of shock absorbers to illegal replacement of parts.

“I’m a clerk,” he laughs. She has definitely been working for the FIA ​​since the first of January and immediately entered the most difficult race. “The mutual courtship for the position lasted almost half a year, and for operational reasons I only have a contract from the first of January. They were long and demanding interviews, and then, when it was clear from both sides, my boss cautiously asked me if I would go to the Dakar straight away. ‘Yes’ came out of my mouth without a single hesitation, because I have always watched this race and wanted to experience it in basically any role.”

Kateřina previously worked at Škoda Motorsport, where she was the main liaison between engineers and mechanics at World Championship rally races. Then she cut an annual episode at Taurus, where SSV Dakar specials are built.

“And now I’m here. Some teams are surprised that a woman holds this position, but when they find out that I might know what I’m talking about and that I can be uncompromising, they’ll quickly understand. But I’m not a ghost, my goal is to help teams interpret the rules, and only if they want to circumvent them, I’ll report it further.”

It is called the “Sweeper Car” and its role in the Dakar Rally is almost legendary and, above all, historic. His task is to rescue competitors in trouble, to get them to safety as well as their equipment, which is unable to move either after an accident or a technical failure. “My job is to pick up competitors who are in need on the track. I give them food, drink, calm them down, we load their vehicle or motorcycles and then I get them either on the road, where the team will take care of them, or to the bivouac. It all depends on the agreement,” says Pascal. “The main thing is to get them safely out of the measured section, which is often a damned difficult task. Machines can be stuck in deep sand or wrecked in an accident.

For Pascal, who steers his lifeboat through a sea of ​​sand and rapids of stones, helping people is the priority. “What’s special about the support car is the human aspect, the interaction with people who may be in real need and need our help. It knows the race is over for them, they’re usually not injured because the medics have already been to them, but they’re often hungry, exhausted and cold.”

The modern Dakar has state-of-the-art tracking technology, a high level of security and we still live in a world of mobile phones and satellite phones, but Pascal had some very moving encounters with competitors who feared for their lives. “Until a few years ago, competitors who had given up on the Dakar Rally had no other option than to wait for a support car. And sometimes they waited for two or three days. Sometimes it happened that they had no more water, food or even hope. There were a lot of those meetings when competitors literally fell into our arms. Fortunately, today we are usually with them within hours.”

Well, these are the professions in Dakar without which this circus could not function. But there are significantly more of them here. From the people who take care of the route planning, through the maintenance of the cleanliness of the toilets and showers, to those who take care of the social networks. And that there really are a lot of them here. A big thank you to all of them!